Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sydney, Oct. 22 Xinhua (Xinhua Jiang Yaping) major cities in the face of growing traffic congestion, an Australian expert advice, free public transportation can be taken simultaneously to charge tolls for private cars of measures to alleviate traffic.

University of Sydney, Australia Professor, Institute of Transport and Logistics John Stanley issued a report that a city to improve urban public transport there are many solutions to the situation, including in non-peak free and allowing people to use public transport, as well as private car drivers entering the city levied tolls to subsidize public transportation.

Stanley believes that private car drivers to road use fee is imposed urban traffic congestion management an effective approach. It was rush hour should be higher than the non-peak road fee collection.

According to statistics, every major Australian city growth rate of private cars more than population growth. Australia this year because of traffic jams caused economic losses estimated as high as 100 million Australian dollars (about 9.8 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020 this figure will increase to 200 billion Australian fear (about 19.6 billion U.S. dollars).

Friday, October 22, 2010

Foreign corporations devastating Papua New Guinea rainforests: "A letter in Nature from seven top scientists warns that Papua New Guinea will lose all of its accessible forest in just ten to twenty years if swift action isn't taken. A potent mix of poor governance, corruption, and corporate disregard is leading to the rapid loss of Papua New Guinea's much-heralded rainforests, home to a vast array of species found no-where else in the world."

Indeed, in a capitalist economy, it’s very likely that energy efficiency gains will lead to higher energy use, not less."

This is Jevons' economic principle. "All things equal, making something more efficient means more usage." We need solutions that change the basic economics. Transport is a system. Systems have tipping points. The auto-system is heavily subsidized and very wasteful. If we increase energy supply the auto-system will consume it. We must first reach a tipping point against the auto. Then the auto subsidies will be seen to be burdensome instead of necessary. The way to do it is free public transport.

Apart from increasing public transport patronage, free public transport would also reduce the cost of living for the poorest people in our society.The government is already taking their money and giving it to corporations. There's no doubt people would prefer that money was used to pay for public services which could help save the planet.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Free Public Transport � Adam Butler: "No I’m not mad. Public Transport should be free. For the time being I will concentrate on rail. In NSW, only 22% of the running costs for rail comes from the travelling public. 53% already comes from taxpayers and the rest from other revenue like property rental, interest, access fees etc….On top of this, Railcorp recorded a surplus of $194M in 07/08. So to have free rail transport we only need to find the 22% received from passengers. Here’s how we can do it (and do it easily)."

Greens' Safe Climate Bill

Travelling with a light footprint
Australia's cities and suburbs are increasingly being built around cars, not people, and more of our intercity travel and freight is going by road or air instead of rail. In a world where peak oil and climate change are converging, this has to change fast.
We have to redesign our cities for people instead of cars, with urban villages connected by fast, efficient and convenient buses, trams and trains, cycleways and pedestrian paths. We have to give ourselves real alternatives to flying between cities. We have to end the subsidies to fossil fuel based transport. We have to think a few steps into the future, instead of repeating the same old mistakes of the past. ReadMore [pdf]